What is Schools L.A. Students Deserve?

Students Deserve is a grassroots coalition of member-leaders working for justice in and beyond schools. We work together as co-organizers who are students, teachers, parents, and family members.

Our work has three main strands: 1. POLITICAL EDUCATION: We want to name and challenge policies and practices that hold up oppressive systems that hurt people at school and beyond. We are learning and teaching histories of dignity and resistance from oppressed communities. We are building unity among people for the sake of increasing justice. At our schools, this means supporting and protecting students who are vulnerable to being targeted such as Black, Muslim, undocumented, and queer students. 2. END POLICING AND PRIVATIZATION: We want an end to random searches, policing, charter school expansion, reconstitutions and all other practices that treat students, families, and teachers like problems, criminals, and undesirables. We want schools to be places that welcome and work with everyone. 3. FUND COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: We want real support for students. This means schools with smaller class sizes and more arts, electives, college counselors, therapists, librarians, custodians, and healthcare services. We know that funding safe and high quality schools are one important part of winning what students deserve and also fighting against policing, privatization, charter school expansion, and reconstitutions or school closures and conversions.

The heart of our work is our vision for the kind of schools and society we want. And we fight to make that vision real. At the same time, we are not waiting. The people involved in this work are also building the kind of schools we want and need now!